Swing State Project

The Swing State Project: Often imitated, never beaten.

It’s beer o’clock. Have at it.

Hinds County Circuit Judge Tomie Green is ordering Haley Barbour’s illegal ballot to be recalled:

Judge Green’s ruling is that the Wicker, Musgrove race should be with the other senate race on the ballot. Meaning it will be just under the race for president.

And because sample ballots have already been sent out to county election commissioners, Judge Green says those ballots must be recalled and corrected as soon as possible.

Attorneys for Governor Haley Barbour and Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann are expected to appeal.

Knowing how perverse the state of justice is in the Mississippi Supreme Court, this victory could be short-lived. We’ll see.

Cooper & Secrest for Mike Montagano (9/9-10, likely voters, 4/24,26-27 in parens):

Mike Montagano (D): 37 (28)

Mark Souder (R-inc): 50 (55)

(MoE: ±4.4%)

Montagano has been making great progress, cutting Souder’s lead by half since April. This is a deeply Republican district that gave 68% of its vote to Bush in 2004, but Souder has been dramatically under-performing in recent years, including a 54-46 win over physician Tom Hayhurst in 2006 — a performance so pathetic that the NRCC was forced to spend $225K in his defense.

Blue Indiana gives us some more details:

Only 30% of the electorate consider themselves “strong Souder voters.”

Mike Montagano has increased his name ID from 16% to 59%, and of voters who recognize both candidates, Montagano leads Souder by a 47% to 41% margin

Of voters who have seen Montagano’s television advertisements, he leads 47% to 37%.

Montagano leads Souder among Independent voters by an 8-point margin.

Souder’s job performance is still sub-fifty, and 44% have a negative opinion of him as the district’s representation in Congress.

Overall, these are some pretty awful numbers for a GOP incumbent in a district this red. Will it be enough to put Montagano over the top? I’m not sure, but he seems poised to at least give Souder another serious scare.

SSP currently rates this race as Likely Republican.

Cuyahoga County Democratic leaders selected Warrensville Heights Mayor Marcia Fudge last night to run for the seat of the late Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones.

Before her time as mayor, Fudge served as Tubbs’ chief of staff in Washington. Her full biography is available here.

The Cleveland Plain-Dealer has more on the somewhat convoluted process to replace Tubbs Jones, which includes both a general election (Nov. 4) and a special election (Nov. 18).

Of all the feedback we get about our House Race Ratings project, one of the more common questions sent our way is the reasoning behind our placing of North Carolina’s 8th District in the “Lean Republican” column. After all, SSP is the only outfit which does not rate this race as a “Tossup”.

Roll Call has an article (with the unfortunate title of “Kissell of Death?”) that contains a few tidbits that might best explain our reticence:

Kissell, who lost to Hayes by 329 votes in 2006 when he raised little money and had no help from national Democrats, initially set out to raise more than $1.2 million this cycle, according to his campaign. But as of July 1, the social studies teacher had raised just $676,000 and, despite not having a primary opponent, he had burned through two-thirds of his campaign cash, leaving his campaign with about $230,000 in the bank going into the homestretch.

Kissell has spent nearly two-thirds of the money that he’s raised so far this cycle, but where has the bulk of that money gone? The answer might surprise you:

[Kissell spokesman Thomas] Thacker pushed back on suggestions that the campaign budgeted poorly or paid too much for political consultants and fundraising expenses, which have gobbled up more than $250,000 this cycle.

That’s a lot of dough to spend… to not raise much dough.

Now, Kissell still does have a lot of things going for him, including a very active ground game and the Obama campaign’s aggressive turnout efforts in North Carolina. The DCCC has also started to make good on their pledge to support Kissell; the committee pumped $120,000 in media buys here earlier this week. Kissell still could pull this one out based on these factors, but we’re not especially thrilled by Kissell’s inability to play much defense against Robin Hayes’ ad wars.

Earlier in day, we noted that the DCCC added businessman Jim Esch (and seven others) to its Red to Blue program. Esch is making his second try against GOP Rep. Lee Terry in Nebraska’s Omaha-based 2nd District, which has a PVI of R+9.

This is an interesting race for a lot of reasons. Despite the lion’s share of the hype in 2006 being directed to Maxine Moul in Nebraska’s 1st and Scott Kleeb in the 3rd District, Esch came the closest to beating a Republican of all three Nebraska House candidates, falling short of Terry by 10% despite running a low-budget campaign. A poll from earlier this summer showed Terry leading by 47-38 — a similar 9-point margin, but under the 50% “vulnerability” threshold for incumbents. Even more interesting are the Presidential numbers in the district — that poll pegged McCain’s lead at a mere four points. It’s numbers like those that show you why Terry was mouthing off so loudly about “Obama-Terry voters” earlier this year.

I think it would take a big national win by Obama in order for him to pick off this electoral vote, and I don’t think that such a scenario is in the cards. But the effort is still being made, as evidenced by the Obama campaign setting up shop in Omaha on Wednesday:

“An Obama win in Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District is an important piece of our pathway to victory this Tuesday, November 4th,” said Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe. “By opening a Nebraska campaign headquarters – the first presidential campaign this cycle to do so – we are able to empower residents to join our grassroots movement for change.”

That event attracted 900 volunteers. However, it’s numbers like these that are the most interesting tea leaves of this election:

Figures from the Douglas County Election Commissioner’s Office show that almost 1,200 registered Democrats were added to county rolls in the past three months, compared with 53 for Republicans.

That was on top of strong Democratic registrations last winter. In February, for example, when Obama made a campaign stop in Omaha, Democrats registered more than double the number that Republicans registered.

The election office said it has a backlog of several thousand registration forms yet to process.

Karl Rove’s biggest success, and his longest-lasting contribution to the Republican Party, was his efforts to build the GOP’s base by activating conservative evangelical voters and making them aware of the stakes in the 2004 election. While Barack Obama’s ultimate fate this November is still very much up in the air, the numbers are pretty clear — in NE-02 and in key swing states around the nation — one party is growing their base, and the other is not.

SSP currently rates this race as Likely Republican.

I was at the Primary Night watch party for Jon Powers on Tuesday. Every TV crew from Buffalo and Rochester showed up. One of the crews was setting up a microphone and we had to get out of the way. Only a few minutes later, the same crew came back to get their mic.

Within minutes, the TV crews were gone.

In the two days since Alice Kryzan topped the polls for a primary win over Powers and Jack Davis, I’ve been looking for some sort of metaphor that would best describe this situation.

How about the tortoise and two hares?

I live in NY-26 and supported Jon Powers ever since I met him and interviewed him on July 8, 2007. Powers had the momentum going. He was picking up endorsement after endorsement. The first four county Democratic committees to endorse Powers were all four of the rural counties in the district: Genesee, Livingston, Orleans and Wyoming. Then Niagara endorsed and Monroe followed. Erie became the last to endorse Powers, giving Powers every county Democratic committee in the district.

So how did he lose? How could he have the support from virtually everyone – local Democrats, DCCC, “grassrooters” in the district, the netroots and others – and lose?

The answer below the fold.

On June 1, The Buffalo News came out with an article (it is archived now, so no link is available) that featured a talking point that would be used against Powers from that moment on. Rick Snowden, the owner of a prominent local strip club called Rick’s Tally Ho, had given money to Powers’ campaign. Snowden gave Powers $2,300 spread across four contributions. The Davis campaign was the one who initiated this smear and used the Davis campaign’s “Women for Davis” chairperson to say that Snowden’s “sweat money” had no place in Democratic politics.

However, Snowden has given to other Democrats, namely Rep. Brian Higgins from NY-27 and a certain junior senator from New York named Hillary Clinton. Clinton also received money from Snowden during her presidential run this year.

That smear of Powers was weak though. People in Western New York know Rick Snowden. He might be a strip club owner, but he has given to many charitable causes and helped many organizations out with a donation and support.

Then came the smear that was started by Davis, being held in the back pockets of the Republicans and utilized by Kryzan in a campaign ad. That smear was that Powers stole money from the organization he started, War Kids Relief. The truth was that he made only $15,000 from WKR, not $77,000 as the Davis campaign alleged and he did not steal the money as both the Davis and Kryzan campaigns stated in their television ads. Overall, he raised $135,000 for WKR, meaning that $120,000 went for the kids, not Powers.

The WKR smear was the worst. What Davis did and Kryzan jumped on the bandwagon (along with some conservative bloggers and all seven county Republican chairs) amounted to a character assassination of Powers. The Snowden thing was meant to appeal to one segment of the voting population: Women. Whether that worked or not is up in the air. But there is no question that the WKR attacks, which were repeated throughout the last month of the campaign, hurt Powers immensely. The initial article in The Buffalo News that hit Powers with this smear calling Powers and WKR “more hype than help” did some considerable damage to Powers. A lesson learned from this is that something like this, whether true or false, can have a damaging impact on a campaign. Especially when that smear happened just over a month before Primary Day.

Davis and his campaign made it their job over the last three months to keep cutting Powers off at the knees. Kryzan didn’t go nearly as far as Davis did, but she still engaged in the same WKR smear.

Powers hit Davis on the issue of bribery, which involved payments to the wives of the Erie and Monroe County Independence Party chairs. Davis eventually apologized for the payments. Powers did dedicate a TV ad to the bribery claim. Whether or not that had an impact on Davis’ failures remains to be seen. Davis wasn’t too well received in this primary to begin with and the final numbers prove that.

Now, Kryzan’s strategy worked for her. An article in the Buffalo News by Jerry Zremski tells us that Kryzan focused mostly on Erie, Monroe and Niagara counties (all three of which she won) and now must focus her attention on winning over voters in the four rural counties – all of which went for Powers.

There is another article today about Kryzan’s now famous “take it somewhere else” ad. I’m not going to drool all over this like some bloggers and reporters have. I don’t think the ad was what did it for Kryzan. She focused on the main counties (all three of the counties she won account for a majority of the Democrats in the district) and won. She also benefited from the tremendous attacks levied against Powers. A lot of people, including those in the media and other on-lookers, have said that Powers and Davis engaged in back-and-forths and negative campaigning. Davis all but admitted on Tuesday night that he ran a strictly negative campaign. Powers, on the other hand, did not engage in such tactics all the time as some would make you believe. Powers went after Davis for his Big Oil and energy investments – something that was factual in nature. In hindsight, perhaps they should have ignored Davis. But I think a millionaire in the race would have made any candidate worry. And that’s what happened in this case.

In no way do I want to diminish Kryzan’s win. But this was a case of a tortoise and two hares. Powers and Davis were moving at great speeds to go after one another. Meanwhile, Kryzan was quiet. Too quiet. She sat back on the sidelines and people really didn’t acknowledge her. I contend that it still didn’t help her (she has a lot to do in the predominantly Republican counties and still plenty to do in the other parts of the district) but it at least kept her out of the mudslinging. The dirty work was already done for her. In her only TV ad that hit both candidates, she used the WKR thing against Powers and the bribery issue against Davis. By that time those issues were already out in the open.

Kryzan made for a great primary election candidate. However, it will be interesting to see what kind of general election candidate she turns into. Powers certainly had progressive bona fides, but he also could appeal to moderates and Republicans. In Kryzan’s case, she will need to do the same.

What does this mean for this race? I think the race rating most have given NY-26 (leans Republican) should stand. The downside to Kryzan staying out of the limelight for as long as she did was that most voters (58 percent of Democrats who voted for Davis or Powers) along with moderates and Republicans don’t know about her. On the surface, she has a lot of upside. She is a progressive Democrat on the issues we do know. She still needs to show that she is a versatile candidate who attract the moderates and conservatives. If she doesn’t, she loses. This is how this district works.

Here are a few final points:

On Powers: I don’t see Powers actively campaigning on the Working Families Party line. I think he will let this go and then run again down the road. The future is bright for him. Sometimes we have to take our lumps and learn. Powers will do that and move forward and be better for it. He will be back. That I can assure you.

On Davis: This was the end of his political “career”, if you can call it that. He spent $1.5 million and in the last three months of the campaign smeared Powers only to come in a distant third. He might say “stay tuned” but the only thing we are staying tuned in for is the end of his political running. In three runs, he failed all three times. This time he failed badly. He is done. If he runs again, he will be laughed at endlessly.

On Kryzan: The primary was a good start. But she has a long road to go. Chris Lee has carried out a Jon Powers-style campaign thus far. Lee will be very formidable for Kryzan. She needs to appeal to rural voters, moderate and conservative voters and the other Democrats who voted for Powers and Davis. This isn’t optional for her. It’s mandatory.  

SurveyUSA (9/8-10, likely voters, 7/28-30):

Baron Hill (D-inc): 50 (49)

Mike Sodrel (R): 39 (42)

Eric Schansberg (L): 5 (4)

(MoE: ±4.1%)

Hill is still looking good in his fourth straight head-to-head against warmed-over Republican retread Mike Sodrel.

Blue Indiana offers some local color. Sodrel has been running an usually quiet and low-energy race, and is still struggling to scrape together some decent coin.

SSP currently rates this race as Lean Democratic.

Research 2000 for Daily Kos (9/8-10, likely voters, 10/22/2007 in parens):

Tom Allen (D): 38 (33)

Susan Collins (R-inc): 57 (56)

(MoE: ±4%)

Un-sexy. How about North Carolina?

Research 2000 (9/8-10, likely voters, 7/28-30):

Kay Hagan (D): 42 (42)

Elizabeth Dole (R-inc): 48 (50)

(MoE: ±4%)

The same poll also finds Pat McCrory up by 5 points in the state’s gubernatorial race, and John McCain crushing Barack Obama by 55-38. Those numbers fit like peas in a pod with a recent funky SUSA poll, but jive pretty sharply with recent surveys by homeboys Public Policy Polling and Civitas — both firms show McCain with a very small lead over Obama, and PPP still has Hagan edging Dole by a single point. Civitas should be releasing a Senate race poll very shortly.

Additionally, a recent Garin-Hart-Yang poll gave Dole a two-point lead (and McCain a three-point edge).

Pick your poison, I suppose. But I’m a little more inclined to believe the home-state pollsters (PPP and Civitas) over R2K and SUSA.

UPDATE: PPP dismisses R2K’s poll as gibberish.